New Republic as State Organ

Martin Peretz had the dubious privilege of owning the money losing New Republic for 35 years. Last year he sold it to Chris Hughes, Facebook Tycoon and Obama insider. He is none too happy with the mag now.

Go here to The Wall Street Journal to read the rest. Mr. Peretz is partially correct. The new owner is clearly farther to the Left than he is, but that is not the major change. The major change is that the New Republic is now simply a house organ of the Democrat party in general and the Obama administration in particular. Tanenhaus, an overrated hack who predicted the demise of conservatism in 2009 and saw his thesis refuted in 2010, is simply part of the Democrat smear of attacking the Republicans, the historic party of civil rights, as racists for cheap political advantage. This is part of an ongoing process on the Left in this country where once independent voices are being brought into line to proceed lock step behind the propaganda marching orders of the Obama administration. This is painful for an old liberal like Peretz to watch since it graphically reveals how much the thirst for political power has become an end in itself on the Left. The examples of this are legion:

Members of the Bush administration were attacked as war criminals on the Left for the use of torture. The Obama administration prefers killing enemy combatants with drones with barely a peep from the Left.

Bush was savaged for going into Iraq. The Left has seen the Obama administration go into Libya and run guns into Syria and barely registered any dissent.

One can only imagine the furor that would exist on the Left in this country if it had been the Bush administration, instead of the Obama administration, that had been responsible for sending guns to Mexican drug cartels in the Fast and Furious Operation.

What we are witnessing in the Obama administration is a successful co-opting of the Left so that it becomes a mere adjunct of the Democrat party. I think long term this will be disastrous for the Left, and wise liberals like Peretz are beginning to take note of something amiss.

Donald R. McClarey

Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three and happily married for 35 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.

Just trying to get a more complete picture of the ethos around here. And while it’s perhaps not directly relevant to the charge that the NYT, etc are state organs under the Obama Administration, I think consistency should be striven for. Furthermore, if “organ of the state” tendencies of major media outlets are wrong and to be avoided, I think a website like this would do better to call out offenders within its own camp- that is, if the point of this blog is to attempt to actually engage a willing audience and perhaps admonish them for missteps instead of offering itself self-congratulatory pats on the back.

I think a website like this would do better to call out offenders within its own camp- that is, if the point of this blog is to attempt to actually engage a willing audience and perhaps admonish them for missteps instead of offering itself self-congratulatory pats on the back.

Literally none of what you said is even remotely germane to this post.

“Literally none of what you said is even remotely germane to this post.”

OK, I’ll save my suggestions that I feel are relevant to this blog’s self-claimed mission for when there’s a post where TAC writers specifically talk about how they don’t criticize errancies on the right.

Brooks could only be considered a conservative by someone very unclear on the concept.

“That first encounter is still vivid in Brooks’s mind. “I remember distinctly an image of–we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant,” Brooks says, “and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.” In the fall of 2006, two days after Obama’s The Audacity of Hope hit bookstores, Brooks published a glowing Times column. The headline was “Run, Barack, Run.”…

“Obama sees himself as a Burkean,” Brooks says. “He sees his view of the world as a view that understands complexity and the organic nature of change.” Moreover, after the Bush years, Brooks seems relieved to have an intellectual in the White House again. “I divide people into people who talk like us and who don’t talk like us,” he explains. “Of recent presidents, Clinton could sort of talk like us, but Obama is definitely–you could see him as a New Republic writer. He can do the jurisprudence, he can do the political philosophy, and he can do the politics. I think he’s more talented than anyone in my lifetime. I mean, he is pretty dazzling when he walks into a room. So, that’s why it’s important he doesn’t f–k this up.”

Ross Douthat is a figure of hate for most of the New York Times’ readers of his posts, judging from his posts and reactions to them in the comment boxes. Comparing them to the list set forth by Art Deco of dissenting voices at Fox is weak tea indeed.

I don’t think it’s a weak comparison. I think one’s deluded if they don’t think WSJ and Fox are more or less the ideological counters to NYT and MSNBC. The logic would therefore follow that if one set consists of “organs of the state,” and that’s a bad thing, then the other side should be equally criticized.

What does one hope to accomplish by making the bold move of calling out the NYT in front of an audience of people that almost entirely already agrees with you? Such posts usually result in a stream of self-satisfied banalities about how them darn libturds are satan’s spawn and the sh*t of the GOP don’t stank.

I’ve raised this point before, and it was met with the same unwillingness to actually engage it. I’ll probably drop it for a couple of months. Maybe it will have some resonance then.

“Ottawa Citizen commentator David Warren has identified Brooks as the sort of conservative pundit that liberals like, someone who is “sophisticated” and “engages with” the liberal agenda, in contrast to a “real conservative” like Charles Krauthammer.[20] When asked what he thinks of charges that he’s “not a real conservative” or “squishy,” Brooks has said that “if you define conservative by support for the Republican candidate or the belief that tax cuts are the correct answer to all problems, I guess I don’t fit that agenda. But I do think that I’m part of a longstanding conservative tradition that has to do with Edmund Burke, which is be cautious, don’t think you can do all things by government planning, and Alexander Hamilton, who wanted to use government to help people compete in the capitalist economy.” In the same interview with Howard Kurtz in September 2012 Brooks talked about being criticized from the conservative side, saying “if it’s from a loon, I don’t mind it. I get a kick out of it. If it’s Michelle Malkin attacking, I don’t mind it.” With respect to whether he was “the liberals’ favorite conservative” Brooks said he “didn’t care,” stating that “I don’t mind liberals praising me, but when it’s the really partisan liberals, you get an avalanche of love, it’s like uhhh, I gotta rethink this.”

Brooks is a mixed-bag. I’ll still maintain that he’s center-right, especially if people like Shep Shepard (when does he actually contribute opinionated commentary?) and Gerlaldo Rivera are trotted out as legitimate liberal mouthpieces. Aside from Wallace, the rest of the people I haven’t heard of, which gives somewhat of an indication of how prominent a position they’re given.

As for Brooks he is a perfect “conservative” for liberals: He bashes conservatives and votes for Obama. Brooks is a smarmy elitist and there is absolutely nothing conservative about him. His support for Obama makes his citation of Burke and Hamilton a mere sick joke.

I think one’s deluded if they don’t think WSJ and Fox are more or less the ideological counters to NYT and MSNBC.

Art already explained why you’re off, at least as it relates to Fox. The WSJ’s editorial board is as libertarian as the NYT’s is left, but the main news content is hardly comparable as the Journal’s straight reporting is hardly as biased as some of the “newsitorials” offered by the Times. Additionally, it would be fair to say that anyone who thinks that right-wing representation in mainstream news outlets is comparable to those in left-wing outlets is the one being delusional.

What does one hope to accomplish by making the bold move of calling out the NYT in front of an audience of people that almost entirely already agrees with you? Such posts usually result in a stream of self-satisfied banalities about how them darn libturds are satan’s spawn and the sh*t of the GOP don’t stank.

Honestly, when I read screeds like this I can only assume you’re just doing schtick. Don’s point is that many left-wing outlets are going out of there way to protect this administration and the left in general. As a tweet I just read so eloquently put it, there’s more media furor over one Latino Senator taking a sip of water than there is for another Latino Senator having sex with an underage prostitute. If you can’t see the inherent bias being demonstrated there, then again, you’re the one who is deluded.

Furthermore, instead of engaging in Don’s argument you change the subject. That is the sign of someone who is intellectually weak. Why don’t you address the points instead of offering up the equivalent of “Oh! Look over there!”

“Art already explained why you’re off, at least as it relates to Fox.”

OK, I disagree with Art. As I imparted to Donald, I don’t think counting up the number of token liberals/conservatives and comparing is necessarily conclusive evidence that one side is the clear “organ of the state” and the other isn’t. I don’t see why these things can’t vary by degrees.

“Additionally, it would be fair to say that anyone who thinks that right-wing representation in mainstream news outlets is comparable to those in left-wing outlets is the one being delusional.”

I never made that claim, so moving on…

What does one hope to accomplish by making the bold move of calling out the NYT in front of an audience of people that almost entirely already agrees with you? Such posts usually result in a stream of self-satisfied banalities about how them darn libturds are satan’s spawn and the sh*t of the GOP don’t stank.

“Honestly, when I read screeds like this I can only assume you’re just doing schtick.”

I’m not. I imagine mine a perspective shared by anyone who comes on this site who already hasn’t declared there unending fealty to the GOP.

“Don’s point is that many left-wing outlets are going out of there way to protect this administration and the left in general.”

And I think the same happened when Bush was in office.

“As a tweet I just read so eloquently put it, there’s more media furor over one Latino Senator taking a sip of water than there is for another Latino Senator having sex with an underage prostitute. If you can’t see the inherent bias being demonstrated there, then again, you’re the one who is deluded.”

OK? And that somehow ties up nicely your argument that Fox has not been an apologist for the GOP?

“Furthermore, instead of engaging in Don’s argument you change the subject. That is the sign of someone who is intellectually weak. Why don’t you address the points instead of offering up the equivalent of “Oh! Look over there!” ”

Yawn. Don copied and pasted a chunk from Wikipedia to engage my original comment, so I returned the favor.

“What does one hope to accomplish by making the bold move of calling out the NYT in front of an audience of people that almost entirely already agrees with you? Such posts usually result in a stream of self-satisfied banalities about how them darn libturds are satan’s spawn and the sh*t of the GOP don’t stank.”

Also, calling this a screed and then ignoring it doesn’t really speak too highly of your intellectual heft.

““That first encounter is still vivid in Brooks’s mind. “I remember distinctly an image of–we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant,” Brooks says, “and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.” ……..

This story is quoted almost in its entirety on Brooks’ wiki page. I assumed that’s where you got it from. My B.

OK, my comment got deleted. Which is fine and probably justified. It’d be nice if that was applied uniformly though, so when someone preemptively accuses me of being “pissy” in an effort to actually make my behavior conform to said accusation, or infers that I am characterized by intellectual weakness and mindlessness, they were held accountable as well.

The New York Times and its sister publication the Boston Globe were reluctant and resistant to do what was commonplace among newspapers by 1975 – set up an op-ed page. In contradistinction to the Washington Post, the Times was never able to develop talented practitioners of topical commentary (of any hue) in its own dugout. The Globe hired its first conservative columnist in 1994 – a local attorney, and later publicly humiliated the man with trumped-up ethics charges. The Times, half a generation earlier, hired someone from Richard Nixon’s pr apparat. The man was a haphazard libertarian who preferred to write columns on English usage. Then they hire David Brooks, who is not politically aligned. Then they hire Ross Douthat, who improves with age but has always had the disconcerting habit of seeming to apologize for what he advocates.

Major newspapers in that era also hired ombudsmen. The Washington Post‘s system – hire someone from the outside, put them on a multi-year contract, and give them dedicated and guaranteed space – was the model. The Boston Globe elected to appoint a pseudo-ombudsman – an inside man and appointed at least one bigot not adverse to functioning as an ideological enforcer. The New York Times was a very late adopter and after initial efforts took to hiring capons.

The list I gave you had six names from a list of three-dozen program hosts (and not all the remaining 30 are clones of Sean Hannity either). You are not going to find that 15% of the New York Times editorial staff consists of identifiable Republicans. You find one rather pallid and polite fellow in the designated slot on the op-ed page, there to be beat up by the publication’s readers in the comment boxes.

Opinion research on the social attitudes of reporters and editors of major media (notably by the sociologist Stanley Rothman) goes back 30 years or more and demonstrates that the dispositions of journalists in the national press corps are dramatically different from corporation executives, various other occupational groups, and the general public. Among other differences, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans exceeds that of the national mean by a margin of around 11 to 1.

A content analysis of stories on economic topics in major newspapers was done some years ago, cataloguing the sources cited as authorities in those stories. Also done was a study of the speeches of Democratic and Republican members of Congress, again remarking who was cited as an authority. Think tanks (Brookings, AEI, Center on Budget an Policy Priorities) have their staff ideologies. The publication whose news articles had citation patterns most resemblant to Democratic members of Congress was the Wall Street Journal. Its editorial page has long been quite distinct from its news pages. Rupert Murdoch used to own the Village Voice. Its content was still pitched to its historic readership. He’s a businessman serving market niches.

Television news prior to 1996 offered little commentary; if you survey the whole period from 1948 to 1995, I think you will find George Will was the only identifiable Republican employed by network news. Fox News may be of very uneven quality, but honestly, is Scott Pelley any serious person’s idea of quality? The complaints about Fox (which does have wretched production values) are a function of liberals being indignant that there actually are other viewpoints to consider (an indignation with which Mr. Jacoby at the Boston Globe came to be familiar).

A generation ago, none of the prominent opinion magazines were extensions of the Democratic Party. Human Events, and, during Mr. Reagan’s term of office, National Review, were party organs. Not so their portside counterparts, who tended to regard the Democratic Congressional caucus as a conclave of clowns.

I would rather see objective reporting. A second choice is ideological reporting. Partisan reporting is dead last. If The New Republic is moving from loyalty to a point of view to loyalty to a party, that’s the loss of an adult voice.

I think Don underestimates the complaints about drone strikes from the ideological left. The middle-left is either being fanboys of the administration, or being realistic about foreign policy (you can argue for either side). The partisan left is unable to criticize its people under any conditions at all. If Peretz sees partisanship so clearly that he felt compelled to rip his old publication in public after, I think, two issues, then there probably really is something wrong with The New Republic.

I think your tri-chotomy is very helpful. Objective, ideological, partisan. The distinctions, however, can be a little blurry. I think any principled conservative can say with some certainty that Fox has definitely, at times, crossed from ideological to partisan, or at least gotten itself into the no man’s land where it’s hard to tell. Is it a stretch to say that, if it were Bush in the White House, they’d have no problem with current drone policy and the DOJ’s related argumentation?

My favorite website is The American Conservative. Dreher, in particular, is fantastic. What are the feelings around here about the other TAC?

My opinion is that it has almost nothing to do with American conservatism, at least American conservatism since the American Firsters of 1941 went down the drain. That their writers support the anti-Semite and idiot Hagel for Secretary of Defense says all that one needs to know about them.

As for Dreher I think he changes his politics almost as frequently as he changes his religion.

I used to visit The American Conservative occasionally. I generally stop reading an article when I run across something anti-Semitic. I realized that on that site I had subconsciously started playing a game, where I’d pick an article at random and read it until the evil Israelis made an appearance. It didn’t seem to matter what the topic was. Then I’d start keying in on “gimme” articles (something like “The Truth about the Middle East”) and see how bad they got. It was an unhealthy game.

My favorite website is The American Conservative. Dreher, in particular, is fantastic. What are the feelings around here about the other TAC?

Mr. Dreher can be mildly entertaining on occasion and provoke a discussion. One cannot credit him with an abiding political or religious viewpoint, more a portfolio of impulses, anxieties, and tastes which generates a series of alternating episodes of affiliation and alienation. (R.S. McCain called him “an insecure fad chaser”, which oversimplifies but is not wrong). He is also given to fallacious reasoning when he is invested in a subject (the late Gerard Serafin used to make sport of him during these episodes).

The American Conservative is not a serious enterprise. It is more a collection of misfits and professional complainers, not an exponent of a line of policy and program. One curio is that the current proprietor has a history as an advocate of a liberal immigration regime, rather odd when you consider the place immigration restriction has in palaeo discourse normally. One of the points well taken about palaeo complaints ca 1987 was for the tendency of teaching and research to be displaced by advocacy and publicity in the conservative world, rendering the ‘career conservative’ a modal type. Waal, the current editor, Daniel McCarthy, pretty much qualifies as a career conservative (to the extent he can be called anything), but one with a bizarre over-estimate of the heft of his stable of contributors (as against the competition, the vulgar ‘movement conservatives’). (For an account of the modus operandi of the previous editorial regime at The American Conservative , see here)

Allowing as how groups can get rather psychologically in-bred, opinions from people outside a certain circle can have considerable value. Now consider the source. Her is a man, now 33 years of age, who spent 12 years on college campuses studying hopelessly impractical subjects; who has no employment history to which he admits; appears to have had no vocational or avocational involvement in workaday politics; no involvement in advertising, public relations, marketing, or promotion; knows next-to-nothing of economics, statistics, business, or finance; and has never served in the military. This professional mouth cum-failed academic is going to tell Mr. Boehner and Mr. Ryan and Mr. McCain how to do their jobs. You think he might just have an outsize concept of his actual abilities?

Him aside, you have Noah Millman, whose presence is a reminder that the editorial purpose of the publication is to offer complaints about prevailing currents of thought in the Republican Party, and never mind the details (those who frequent the comment boxes make this plain as well). Then you have Philip Giraldi, lapsed scholar of renaissance Italy, purported retired CIA agent, and anti-semite. Then you have Andrew Bacevich, cashiered Army colonel whose shtick is that the military can accomplish nothing of value.

Yeah, I read that Larison piece. He seems to think (a) that a lot of non-political people are closely watching the GOP’s handling of the Hagel nomination, and (b) a Senator should only vote against a nominee if there’s something in it for his party.

I wasn’t aware of their overwhelming anti-Semitism. I am occasionally put-off by what I consider their unreasonably hardline approach to immigration.

I guess I don’t entirely care too much about what Dreher thought 5 years ago. What he writes now resonates pretty well. Additionally, I think more favorably of those who leave Catholicism for the Eastern Orthodoxy than I do for people who go the other direction and embrace evangelical Protestantism.

i dunno that Hagel will be awful. i _do_ think he subscribes too much to an Israel-centric view of U.S. foreign policy, i.e. if the U.S. does something he considers ill-judged, it must be from undue Israeli influence. it’s a single-cause view of foreign policy that isn’t accurate — for instance it’s been pointed out that Israel was wary about the potential shakeup in the M.E. balance of power in the region if Saddam was overthrown, and only supported the U.S. invasion when it became clear it was gonna happen.

also along this line is Hagel (allegedly to be fair, but from a source sympathetic to him) referring to the State Department as an “adjunct of the Israeli foreign ministry” when institutionally it’s the federal department least sympathetic to Israel. i make a distinction between legit criticism of certain Israeli actions and this sort of talk that is vaguely conspiratorial and assumes mala fides.

beyond that, the guy is referred to as a “realist” but never has supported any form of tough diplomacy and never criticizes one side in a conflict even when it’s clearly in the wrong. the choice is presented as though Hagel represents a common-sense diplomatic mind vs. the Nuke Iran caucus but it’s a false dichotomy.

on TAC their only clear principle is America Firstism (still remember pre-election when their editor Dan McCarthy praised Russell Kirk voting for Socialist candidate Norman Thomas as a “vote against Empire,” a completely moronic statement that demonstrates the magazine’s reflexive non-interventionism) and imputing the worst motives onto anything Israel does. it’s like the original writers/editors there extracted the foreign policy views of Pat Buchanan (one of their founders) and absolutely nothing else.

their newer writers just blather on about Burkean conservatism/how Obama’s really kinda conservative as though conservatism defined by Burke is solely a vague, amorphous attitude regarding change (this is similar to what David Brooks does.) i am for ideological flexibility, but in these cases old conservative thinkers are typically simplified to be compatible with a liberalism lite. even with Russell Kirk’s “conservatism as negation of ideology,” it’s obvious the man was pretty ideological to his core — he just argued his ideology as based in natural truths, as opposed to revolutionary fervor.

beyond that, the guy is referred to as a “realist” but never has supported any form of tough diplomacy and never criticizes one side in a conflict even when it’s clearly in the wrong. the choice is presented as though Hagel represents a common-sense diplomatic mind vs. the Nuke Iran caucus but it’s a false dichotomy.

I think ‘realist’ is being used here to refer to a specific interpretation of the dynamics of international politics associated with Hans Morgenthau (among others). Schools of thought in international political theory do not map precisely to the general run of partisan or ideological disputes. You have ‘realists’ v. ‘liberals’ v. ‘radicals’ as a primary taxonomy and then you have species of realists, liberals, and radicals, and then you have policy differences among the species derived from interpretation of the facts on the ground. Both Henry Kissinger and Andrew Bacevich would be classified as ‘realists’, though their policy prescriptions would likely differ quite a bit.

I think it would be wrong to attribute to Daniel McCarthy or Ron Paul a perspective on international politics derived from academic literature. Someone once called Dr. Paul ‘a parody of an early 20th century politician’. Parodies of inter-war political discourse about sums up much of The American Conservative‘s stock-in-trade.